Finding apartments in a city you don't live in

[sa]

Yes realtors handle rentals as well. At least they do around here.

When we moved here we actually stayed in a one month rental so that we could look for a place in person.

It was a pain to have such temporary living, but I felt much more comfortable signing a lease on a place I'd seen in person.

[Deleted]

In New York, there are lots of rental brokers, but they're expensive (typically they charge 15% of a year's rent for their services).

On the off chance that you are talking about NY, streeteasy.com, urbansherpany.com, and nybits.com are good places to search for listings/do research on buildings and price ranges and such.

[Deleted]

Are you familiar with the area? If not I'd post here too - people can be very helpful, particularly when it comes to neighborhood reviews.

[beefjerky]

hotpads.com is a good one I've used before.

[Deleted]

Where are you headed? I'm sure there's MMers that could help with understanding neighborhoods.

[winnied]

Padmapper.com or a realtor. At least with the realtor my friend used in finding her apartment, she was not charged. The person trying to rent out the apartment paid for the realtor.

[karinothing]

Don't leave me

[mskitkat]

We used a realtor when we were relocated across country. We only had a weekend to find a place to rent, so it was much simpler to let someone else do the legwork.

[Deleted]

Check out the local online news channels/newspapers. We have a local channel that has a great board for rentals, housing and the like. It might be worth the look.

[Ashley&Scott]

When we moved to our city we used apartments.com to narrow done our search, then we toured places.

[lolo]

Dec 4, 2012 12:41:39 GMT -5 winnied said:

Padmapper.com or a realtor. At least with the realtor my friend used in finding her apartment, she was not charged. The person trying to rent out the apartment paid for the realtor.

Love padmapper. And highly recommend a relocation/rental specialist/realtor in the area.

[Pom]

There are apartment finder offices all over here in San Antonio. I don't know where you are moving to, but if that type service is available, do it. The apartment complexes pay them to place you. We had a great experience when we had not much time to search, very helpful.